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Everyone these days owns a smart phone, which either has windows, Mac or Android OS. Android is most popular among all. Being an open source platform, it can be installed by any phone manufacturer, that makes the manufacturing cost of these phones much lesser than the phones having their own OS or any that is paid.

What are Android Applications and their APKs?

Applications that are developed for Android platform are Android application. Each application when developed carries many different files and folders within it, that defines its functionalities and resources, and in order to run that app in mobile, one need to create an archive that contains all the necessities. This archive file is known as Android Application APK, i.e. Android package kit.

What does an APK consist of?

APK is a full package containing all the necessary data and files that is must to run an app on a Mobile Phone. It consist of

· Source code used to define App’s functionalities, in general terms referred as classes.dex.

· Manifest file, i.e. the file that specifies the

1. Permissions that application needs.

2. Its flow

3. Package

4. Version codes

5. Signatures.

6. Certificates.

7. SHA-1 Digest.

· Libs, is a directory containing compiled code or jar files, used as library for applications.

· Assets, it is a directory that has arbitrary files like fonts, audio, texts etc. in it.

· Resources like XML files that define the layout of different pages of the application.

· It also contains META-INF directory and res directory.

When an app is developed, after its testing, an export APK is generated where the developer signs the app with a secret key to prove his authority over the app. Now, this Signed APK is uploaded to Google play store for its availability for Users.

When a person is downloading an application from any source such as Play Store, he is actually downloading and installing the APK of that application on his phone.

apps than Google Play Store, one more place where you can find Android applications absolutely free and without even having an account on Google is APK MIRROR.